There was no way even for the last children of N’Lem to move silently, not across the surfaces of these gleaming lakes, this river-like road that led them between shifting pillars of living gold, silver, electrum. Each footfall elicited that most pleasing of sounds, the inimitable song of many different precious metals caressing, ringing like bells as miniature avalanches erupted, showering coins and other precious little jewels, brooches, and trinkets down upon the boot that rudely trespassed in this hallowed place.
Seeing such a thing stole away all his thoughts of dread and disaster, if only for a moment. But it was not greed – it was only wonder. Even the surface of this shining roadway would ransom a nation. How deep down did it go? How many continents’ wealth was stored in this one place?
And so many coins minted… Few bore the Mundian stamp, and he recognised none of the others – many were simply unmarked discs.
How far back do we go, treading here? How old is our dimension?
In any case, Phanar would have had Ibbalat cause them to fly or hover, would have eagerly spent resources on obtaining stealth, if there had been a need. But the motionless person sitting on the boulders beyond the gold lake, the sole occupant of the lair, already knew they were here. Ord Ylon was awaiting them in the darkness with grace and patience, watching them approach from his vast rocky throne rising above the treasures – the stony landscape that was suggestive of his true size.
But they went forward with a magical shield like Redgate’s active, according to Ibbalat; this would stop him sending an innocuous little stinging- or biting-creature at them to paralyse or poison them, and would even extend beneath the clinking ground they strode upon, defending them against any potential attackers below the surface.
There was no light in here. The tremendous shaft on the left side of the chamber, leading up past the balconies of the kobold city, admitted only the night’s blackness at this late hour. Still, the potion that allowed Phanar to perceive his surroundings without difficulty did not let him read the face of the dragon – it was a human face, of ordinary human dimensions. Even if its expressions had also betrayed a trace of this borrowed humanity, that visage was too distant for the warrior to make out clearly.
Still, they neared. Not speaking, barely even breathing… As they came closer to him across the coins, details slowly resolved themselves.
Ord Ylon wore the shape of a man in his thirties or forties, tall-looking but not abnormally-so. He was clad in simple white linens, his skin pale green and his hair a spiky bush of bronze stalks. Glittering stubble was on his cheeks and around his lips. He was almost sprawled across the rough stones, his posture one of languor, relaxation, rather than anything approximating battle-readiness.
But the expression, painstakingly coming into sharp relief –
Hatred. Such a hatred that at first Phanar thought he imagined it, thought the words of Redgate about a reflective cage were haunting him. But no – they reached the edge of the stones protruding from the gleaming lake, the floor before which the boulder-throne of the dragon rose up, and from here the snarl frozen upon the green-tinged face was no longer mistakable.
“No closer,” he murmured. If Phanar was right about the speed with which the dragon might transform, another ten steps might put them within reach of his breath… and if he used his magic to enlarge himself, who could say if any part of his lair would be far enough from him for safety?
He noticed that Ibbalat was also murmuring under his breath, but this wasn’t a response, or anything intended for mortal ears in fact – Phanar recognised the intonation and a couple of the strange syllables; the mage was already casting his spells.
Then it began.
“Hail, Phanar and Anathta, Kanthyre and Ibbalat.” The voice that came rolling down at them was low, hollow, yet far from quiet. “It is well that I can look at last upon your faces. How I have longed to behold them; how oft have I seen them in my grief. And now – here you are, like phantoms sprung full-formed from nightmare’s subtle substance. For that is what you have been to me; surely this you know? This is what you were, and what you are… But as regards what you shall become? To me, this eve will be the sweetest dream of all recollection; my inner eye, whose lid first opened in the days of your grand-sires, ancestors no less than a score of generations removed – that eye shall be blinded at the ecstasy of the sight! And this I promise, my brave, wicked heroes: even then shall you be remembered when five more centuries have passed, and I look back a final time in wistful remembrance, before at last I forget you. You alone of all your generation shall be so upraised as to live on in thought; such have been your misdeeds.”
I have lived longer than you, wyrm, Phanar thought, and, living or undead, I will this day go forth from your lair into a world freed from your pestilence.
“Murderers all, then, are we not?” the warrior called up to the man-dragon sitting on the rocks. “Yet you it was whose stroke fell first. We slay your kin in turn, as ours were slain… Even while you exceed us, outstrip us in every way – still, we are superior. We act now out of justice, duty –”
“My stroke fell first? Upon whose skull did the lord sit, him you served in Miserdell?”
Yet where is the skull? Phanar wondered. Was Kani wrong about his collection?
“You dare speak the word duty?” Ord Ylon was crying out now, no longer restraining himself, and the thunder of the voice was daunting – more dragon than man. “Justice?”
Ylon came up to his feet suddenly, and the boulder cracked beneath his heel.
“You know not the meaning of such words! You do not even know this world! What it once was, and what it shall become again. Usurpers! Defilers of honour! It is only a Returning I seek.”
“Kultemeren defies you!” Kani roared out of nowhere, swinging her mace in readiness. “You are a life-shaper with no respect for life, a healer whose touch only rots! Wythyldwyn shall encompass your end. You give me words – I would rather take acid from your mouth than this pitiful mewling!”
“And Kultemeren defies you, ill-begotten child of Wythyldwyn. I know of what I speak.”
“Speak not the Maiden’s name!” the cleric gasped. “You sully it, letting it fall from your black tongue, child of the Dark Lady!”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Ylon grinned, and coppery fangs gleamed there between his lips.
“You think we worship Chaos, do you not?” He shook his head slowly. “You, and I, and Wythyldwyn alike; all were birthed from the Grandmother’s womb. Yet we do not deny what we are. We know each god has their place. Can the same be said for your low kindred?”
Kani seemed to be taken aback, and didn’t reply.
“No…” Ylon went on. “The depths of your arrogance, your insolent, intolerable arrogance, cannot be overstated. Vermin, all of you! Did I not promise you the slow death? Am I not upright before Glaif? Is what I do now not fore-ordained?”
“Yet thou shalt be forsworn,” the cleric breathed, not for the dragon’s ears.
Still, he heard.
“Put it to the test, then!” Ord Ylon roared. “In the names of my children, I will destroy you with human hands! You are fit for nothing more. Ausan! Givelfor! Chalibros! I beckon!”
The druid-dragon leapt down towards them through the air, still man-shaped.
“Finally!” Anathta chirped, already darting aside. “I thought he’d never shut up.”
As Ord Ylon landed in what should have been their midst, they had already scattered; the druid jumped out of the crater he’d created, moving through the billowing cloud of stone-dust with the nimbleness of a mountain goat and the unrelenting strength of a fiend.
They had all scattered, all of them except, seemingly, Ibbalat – the mage stood there, transfixed, staring at their foe.
The green-tinged face smiled cruelly, and Ord Ylon sprang at the paralysed magician; there was only a momentary interruption in his forwards momentum as he broke through whatever meagre shielding Ibbalat had been capable of forming – then the dragon was upon him, ripping and kicking.
Upon the illusion.
Phanar, looking back over his shoulder as he slipped over the uneven ground with his own mountain-goat nimbleness, couldn’t blame the dragon for falling for the glamour – Ibbalat was getting better at his clutch-casting.
It paid off. The warrior spotted the first ranged attacks landing on Ylon, hitting him in the upper-arm and the side of his head – a bolt shooting unerringly from Anathta’s crossbow, shining with fierce silver fire, and a bolt of literal silver fire arcing out from Kani’s extended mace.
Ord Ylon shrugged off the magical damage, physically brushing away the glowing spell-effects from his seared body and clothing, letting the silver flames pool at his feet. The metal head of Anathta’s shaft was spat out of his bicep and fell into the gleaming fire.
He was ignoring the others, trying to fix his eyes on Phanar – and then the warrior noted the way the dragon’s eyes fell behind him as he continued circling the creature.
This was how the dragon was going to try to trick them, trap them – if they closed on him, or he closed on them, he could change without a moment’s notice and kill them with his sheer body-mass.
This was how he was going to fail.
Before Ylon spoke and he replied, Phanar had been wondering what better opportunity Redgate might find to slay the monster – the dragon’s head was human-sized, and would surely be easier to remove from his shoulders in this form.
Now, he couldn’t even remember who Redgate was or why he mattered.
He grinned back at Ord Ylon over his shoulder, preparing his brace of anti-dragon throwing daggers.
This final confrontation – it was everything for which he’d longed, sunlight bursting into a place that had heretofore known only darkness.
I smashed the hourglass! I remade it in starlight! I am my future!
“What is this?” Ord Ylon hissed, bounding in Phanar’s general direction, creating more craters, more dust-clouds – but plainly moving without a real lock on the warrior’s location.
Thank you Ibbalat, Phanar thought, rubbing his thumb against his new ring fondly.
Kani landed another blow, using her weapon this time – she ripped across from one side of the boulder-strewn landscape to the other, her mace connecting with a violent clang, an explosion of golden smoke around Ord Ylon’s head –
That’s her new ring, Phanar realised.
He looked over to check she’d successfully left Ylon’s vicinity, and he wasn’t disappointed – she’d travelled three hundred feet in something like one-and-a-half seconds – but with another glance he saw what had happened.
Her mace – the weapon she’d wielded through dozens of battles – now deformed, a shapeless, sloppy lump of metal atop a stick.
She’d struck all manner of enemies with that thing – he’d seen it dent and batter plate armour without suffering the slightest imperfection – yet a single blow against the arch-druid’s skull had left it broken beyond repair. It would need a full reforging, whatever ancient magic that had flowed through it probably lost forever.
Dust erupted about the dragon suddenly, but not as he moved – before he leapt, this time.
Ibbalat didn’t raise just one pillar of stone – he raised four, and the rock-fingers twisted inwards, pinning Ord Ylon in place.
It only took the dragon a split-second to burst free, but by then two shining arrows were protruding from his face – on the far side of their foe Phanar saw Anathta, sprinting again into a new position.
It was with a grimace of irritation this time that Ord Ylon brushed the bolts free of his flesh, scooped away the sharp pieces of metal and the silver radiance they bore. He’d just shrugged off the last of Ibbalat’s stony obstacles when the first of the mage’s fireballs reached him, detonating off his chest.
They wailed through the air in series, growing as they went.
Ka-koom! Ka-koom! Ka-koom! Ka-koom! Ka-koom!
After the fifth fireball, the warrior saw the dragon’s body being flung, tossed unnaturally upwards by the force of the last explosion. Clothing gone. Pallid skin unharmed.
Phanar had circled enough – his friends were getting to have all of the fun.
He closed on the dragon, feeling the exhilaration of letting go, trusting to the magic of his ring to protect him while he was running full tilt like this –
Two of his daggers went wide, but three struck Ord Ylon even as their foe was still being flipped wildly through the air.
The dragon landed in a heap, slamming into the ground head-first like a ten-ton iron hammer, and Phanar kept sprinting towards him.
Supposedly the weapons he’d slung were bound-over with potent anti-draconic magic, and each dagger gleamed a different colour every time he looked at them; there was surely some ensorcellment placed on them, even if identifying the exact nature of the spell had stumped Ibbalat. Despite this, the ensorcellments didn’t stop the dragon from flipping to his feet, picking the knives out of his upper arm, chest, cheek, dropping them to the floor seemingly undisturbed by their stings –
The ensorcellment on Phanar’s sword appeared to work, though, when he drove it straight through the dragon’s chest from behind.
As he dashed by and delivered the stroke, he felt the sword’s blade jar from the bones within the chest cavity, but it didn’t break, only twisting; its keen tip came out the front with a spatter of acid, protruding between his ribs just over his stomach.
And the last son of N’Lem was was running past – running away.
We need something that goes through his bones, he thought desperately. Where are you, Redgate?
Looking back at Ord Ylon kneeling there – naked upon the rocks, staring down in shock at the white, pulsing blade upon which he’d been impaled – Phanar slowed, then stopped.
May I never invoke him again, he swore to himself.
The sorcerer rose up through the uneven ground right in front of Ylon, a thing of blood and shadow, altogether unlike the pale, scintillating druid.
Unlike – yet they were kindred, each steeped in power, in heinous deeds.
“How disappointing,” Redgate murmured, reaching down towards the dragon with a hand that could slay almost anything using just a gesture –
“Finally,” the dying druid spoke – and now it was indeed the dragon’s voice, not weak or broken but grating and strong, blasting out of the man’s mouth as though he held within his slender frame a bellows the size of a war-galley.
Redgate recoiled, up and away.
Ord Ylon changed, Phanar’s sword seemingly disappearing inside him as he swelled into immensity.
It took only moments, giving them at most three seconds to start reacting, retreating – but the great black slit, the pupil of the wyrm’s gargantuan eye, focussed on Anathta’s slinking form first, ignoring the champion floating right there.
The voice was a hideous roar, steely jaws like twin armies in conflict, gnashing the words.
His laughter was deafening.
“Finally… Ha-ha-ha-ha! I thought he would never show up. Now – the slow death as I promised,” the great head whipped about, a sinuous motion of incredible speed, focussing at last on Redgate, “and all the rest to come.”
* * *